Outlet Grounding in Seattle

Protecting Your Home & Your Family

Is your home properly grounded? One way to check is to look at your existing
outlets. If they look like the "no ground" image to the right,
your outlets are not grounded. If your outlets are not grounded, you and
your family are at risk of electrical shock, and your appliances and electronics
are at risk. There are a couple of different ways to meet code with grounding.

One is to install a ground wire at every outlet. To do this, you would
either rewire all of the outlets or pull a stranded ground wire from box
to box. The rewire method is recommended since the labor is the same cost. Our
Seattle electricians can handle this process quickly and efficiently.

The second option is to GFCI-protect the circuits or individual outlets.
You can swap out every outlet in the home that is ungrounded with a GFCI
outlet and the GFCI outlet can act as a physical ground. Another way to
GFCI-protect is to install GFCI breakers. The breakers act the same as
a GFCI outlet but they control all of the outlets/lights hooked to the breaker.

Why Use Ground Rods

Ground rods are also essential. Below is an image of what a ground rod
looks like. NEC code requires two eight-foot rods driven into the ground.
If you want to check your system, go out to your electrical meter and
search for them in the ground. Usually, there is a copper wire coming
out of the home down into the ground to connect them to the electrical
panel. If you have no ground, you owe it to yourself to have a technician
look over your electrical system.